The world's top-ten chipmakers investing in R&D raised the ante last year by 6 percent, led by Intel, according to market research firm IC Insights. The top ten increased their overall expenditures to $35.9 billion in 2017.

Commercial robotic cars will hit the road in 2018, not - as previously predicted - two or three years from now. Supply chain intelligence collected by Yole Developpement shows the autonomous vehicle market evolution for the next five years.

Broadcom said it was evaluating its options for acquiring Qualcomm after Qualcomm and NXP agreed to a new deal, which had been widely expected based on the performance of NXP's stock in the 16 months since the two companies first agreed to a deal.

The International Solid-State Circuits Conference last week showcased a few new developments on the image sensor front, outgrowing the past beauty-contest trend in favor of a race to add more context to images as their sensors capture them.

Tsinghua Unigroup has joined with China-backed semiconductor investment firm Sino IC Capital and the municipal government of Chongqing in a joint venture that plans to invest up to $100 billion in Tsinghua manufacturing facilities in the next 10 years, according to China's state-run Xinhua news agency.